Friday, 15 March 2002

Four Small Deaths, March 15, 2002

Four unrelated monologues featuring four or more deaths
comprise Stephen Davis's script, Four Small Deaths, directed by Tom Gutteridge.

The four pieces are entertaining. However, they are quirky
but not ground breaking, funny but not sophisticated. They have limited
dramatic narrative development, characters remain unchanged by what happens and
there is no sub-text.

Davis's writing lacks depth and subtlety. Gutteridge
cleverly chooses to keep staging and design to a minimum but the ends of scenes
need to be clearer. The pieces bleed into each other, undercutting their
endings.

Two actors, Julie Eckersley and Eddy Segal perform the lead in two scenes each.

Eckersley is
engaging and energetic in both roles and shows a comic talent in number four.

Segal gives a good line in the pathological but the
performance lacks detail and is vocally restricted throughout the show.

In the first, Segal is Timothy, a twitchy, neurotic and
violent young man who is being questioned by the police about the bloody death
of his girlfriend and of a stranger.

The scene moves from his description of the interrogation to
his ruminations on his past actions, meeting his girlfriend, falling in love,
rouging up a kid on the football field. He is clearly unstable, even
pathological.

Number two sees Eckersley as a psychotic serial killer who
invades a man's home and ties him to a chair so she can taunt, torture then
murder him gruesomely. Eckersley is not quite believable in the role but makes
a good show of it.

In three Segal, as the clearly disturbed Simon, prowls
around his room waiting for the sleeping (or is she dead?) girl he picked up
last night to wake.

We hear about his hatred for his mother, his tattoos, his
piercings and his desire to suicide.

The last is a peculiar parody of Grace, a teenager, pitching
her movie script. Eckersley plays Grace and all the wacko characters in her
slasher movie, Killer Bunnies. This is really a sketch rather than a short
play. Twenty minutes was too long.